Neon Genesis: The Aperture Defense Network
by PixelsShattered
Summary: After the Second Impact, the body of Lilith is hastily moved to the most defensible place on the planet, somewhere most people have never heard of, and somewhere the government wanted to keep under the rug. Aperture Science, Michigan Branch is quickly fortified and the one person GLaDOS vowed to never awaken is forced to be brought out of stasis. First of this kind, R&R!
1. Welcome to Aperture

**A/N: Wow, nobody's done this before? I honestly thought that at least one person would have thought of this before, with Pacific Rim and all, but hey, I guess I'll do it. Totally AU by the way. All of it.**

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Did I escape? Did I win? Was I free of Aperture? I couldn't remember. Everything was blank, dream-like. Then, a pin of light in the darkness. So close, yet, so far. I reached for it. I stretched my arm out far, and the light grew. So bright, I thought, as I threw myself forward through the murky watery darkness toward the light. I swam further up, close to the light. Almost there, almost there. I was very close now, only a few feet from the surface.

Then, everything shook. Violently.

My eyes flashed open, and I saw green water all around me, and past that, a glass cylinder. There was a man in a labcoat in front of me. I banged my fists on the glass, and he looked up, surprised, before going back to whatever he was doing on a small terminal. I hit the glass again, trying not to breathe in the liquid all around me. My breath was running out. I hit the glass once more with the strength I had left. I noticed the water beginning to dissipate, lowering past my head. I took a huge gasp in of air, and looked around as my feet fell onto the bottom of the glass cylinder I was contained in. The man stepped up, on the other side of the glass.

"What is your name?" he asked, rather promptly, through the glass. I hesitated. What was my name? I racked my brain, trying to remember the name I was given at birth. Why didn't I know this? I thought hard. It has a K at the beginning. No, a hard CH. Yeah, that's right. Come on, how was it? C,H, then a vowel. An E. There we go, C, H, E,… Chell! That was my name, right? It sounds so natural! That's got to be it! I opened my mouth to answer, but he cut me off. "Yeah, I didn't think you'd remember anyway. It's Chell." He huffed. Well now, awful rude. "Last name?" He demanded. I wasn't going to answer him if he was going to be like that!

"Doesn't matter, you don't have one on file anyway." The scientist, or so I assumed, scoffed as he flipped up a sheet on a clipboard. "So just follow me. I've got someone who wants to see you."

I stepped out of the tube, a bit shaky on my bare feet, and looked around to see hundreds of other green glass cylinders lines up across the walls of the massive room. The man set off, and I hesitantly followed. This place looked familiar, I guess. The stark white hallways reminded me of somewhere I'd ben before, someone I'd met, but nothing was coming to me. Everything in my mind was one big blurry blob. We continued down an office area, rounding a few corners, until we got to a glass bridge that looked incredibly familiar. I knew this place, I just couldn't put my finger on it. I felt like there was danger on the other side of the door at the end of the bridge, but I continued in. Pas the door were two terminals, each with a red dial-up phone. A red phone. I knew those phones. Past the phones was a giant, snakelike figure hanging from the ceiling.

No, no it can't be. No, no, no, no. Not here, why am I here, anywhere but here. I escaped, didn't I? I Won, I killed the machine, I went to the moon! She let me go, why am I here? I looked down to see the orange Aperture Science test subject jumpsuit. The walls bore the Aperture logo, the phones, a last defense against the homicidal GLaDOS, and before me, the AI hung, staring back at me with a piercing yellow eye.

"We both know I don't want you here" the massive machine said, voice dripping with simulated anger. The entire room went silent at the words as scientists stopped working and engineers put their tools down. "But," the machine sighed, "as much as I despise the idea, I need you. Believe me, I tried to do this without you, but I can't. It just isn't meant to happen." I sat, angry and confused. Do what? Why do I have to do 'it'? "Oh, I assume you have no idea… well, things have changed since you were above ground. Well, besides the end of the Stone Age, but _other_ things have changed. Namely, everything. Lucky you we're in the middle of the North American Continent, or this place would be underwater. However, because this is one of the only surviving places on earth, we've got a bigger problem, namely, Angels. Long story short, we've got to kill them all, and by we I mean you." I crossed my arms. First of all, does She really expect me to believe that? Second, even if whatever that nonsense was is true, why does She expect me to just go kill all these "Angels"? Weren't Angels the good guys? I mean, I was never the religious type, but every time I ever heard of angels was when they were the servants of whatever holy god. I stared silently back at the computer, still unwilling to talk to Her.

We glared at each other for a few moments, before a scientist interrupted our silent grudge match. "Sorry to interrupt, Caroline, but we've got a problem." The computer spun around, annoyed.

"It better be important." The computer half-yelled. The scientist shrank back and murmured something I missed, but GLaDOS reeled back and started barking orders around the control room. I stood back as scientists and generals manned various stations around the room.

"You," the machine spun to address me, slightly panicked, "You, go with, uh, Sakura are you in here?" The AI spun, looking for someone specific. A young girl, a good six or seven years younger than me, caught the supercomputers sweeping eye. "Over there, the one waving, follow her." GLaDOS finished, turning back and giving more orders. The girl grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the room, before introducing herself.

"Hi, I'm Sakura, and you're Chell, right?" She asked, rather spirited. I nodded. "Hm, not a talker, huh? That's fine, but you've gotta follow me, I've got something to show you, and I can fill you in on all this while we go!" I shrugged and nodded again. "So, I guess I'll start at the Second Impact. There was this thing in Antarctica that woke up while it was being started and, in the simplest terms, it blew up. The majority of the world flooded, and killed a ton of people, and now, because of that, there are these things called Angels that are attacking us for reasons I'm not quite at liberty to tell you. Sorry…" she paused, checking windows as we walked down one of the nicer halls Aperture had. She stopped at one. "Look, this is what we use to fight these Angels." She told me as I looked through the window to see a giant head and shoulders sticking out of a giant pool of red-orange water. "They're about to launch that one, so you can see it in action. There's an Angel incoming right now, that's why everything got so crazy. I slowly nodded again, trying to take everything in. Since when did Aperture Science, a shower curtain factory and later human testing center become a line of defense against these "Angels", and when did they get giant robots? Was this the same Aperture I was tested in and nearly killed more times than I could count?

"Hey," Sakura interrupted my thoughts, "What's the beef between you and the commander? She's usually not that bitter towards the new pilots." New pilots? Pilot of what? I could talk, right? I tried clearing my throat, and managed to croak a few words.

"Well," I coughed and tried clearing my throat once more. Not talking in a good 9999999 days really does a number on your vocals. "Well, before whatever this is, I was a test subject." Sakura seemed unimpressed.

"All the new pilots are unused test subjects, and, sorry, for another reason I can't discuss with you." Wow, lots of secrets around here. I glanced back at the glass and noticed the water was now completely gone, revealing a roughly 80 meter tall robot covered in white armor with black accents here and there. I noticed a white tube sticking out of its lower neck, which quickly slid in and was covered over by two plates of armor. I looked back to continue the story.

"Well, she used me to do Her tests, and before She could kill me, I escaped, and almost killed Her, but she captured me and put me back in tests that were designed solely to kill me, but I survived and replaced her core with another core, who went crazy and tried to kill both of us. Then-"

"Wait, you're THE Chell? Like, you knew Wheatley?" Sakura once again interrupted me, excitedly.

"Yeah, he was the core that I put in Her place. Why? Is he here?" I asked, eager to see him again. He didn't really deserve to be sent to space, it was just a defense reflex, I guess, to shoot anything portal-ly.

"Yeah, we had to get him out of space and everything, but he's your designated core! How cool is that!" Sakura was very excited now, but everything she was saying was Greek to me.

"Designated core? For what?" I asked, hoping it wasn't something serious. He had good intentions, sure, but he also had a way of screwing them up.

"Well, I'll explain it later, but we've gotta hurry if you want to see the fight!" She exclaimed, grabbing my wrist and running me down a side hall and into a room adjacent to the giant tank that the giant robot was now absent from. She led me into an office with plenty of screens, one of which showed a guy roughly my age sitting with a core in front of him. I couldn't quite see the actual core, but the green glow it cast on the boy's chest made me think it could be Rick, the Adventure Core. Other cameras switched on, showing the giant robot from different angles.

I watched as it ran to meet a giant black figure, also covered by a camera. The two clashed, or more accurately, the black creature, which Sakura informed me was an Angel, created some sort of forcefield that the robot was attempting to bash through. The robot managed to crack through the shield and began to grapple with the Angel. The two were genuinely incredible to watch fight. Sakura patched through into the communication between GLaDOS and the robot as I watched.

"Located the core, I'll try and get a shot in" came a voice, of which I assumed belonged to the pilot of the robot.

"Rodger. Core density seems to be rather average. Permission to dispatch." Someone in the control room responded.

"Haha, this is what I was built for!" yelled a core, definitely Rick. The robot shoved the Angel off and brought out a knife from one of the thick shoulder pylons and engaged once again. The Angel began swinging for the head of the robot, and managed to catch it in another grapple. The robot, however, managed to free an arm and stabbed the Angel in the chest multiple times. The beast roared and quit trying to fight, opting instead to wrap itself around the robot as it desperately tried to shove the Angel off.

Without warning, the Angel violently exploded, showering red everywhere. "Third Angel neutralized" GLaDOS announced, through the radio and speaker systems thorough Aperture. Sakura was ecstatic, pumping her fists in the air.

"So, how do you feel about your new job?" She asked after calming down. New job? Was that was I was going to be doing?

"Do you mean… that's what I'm going to be doing?" I asked, hesitantly, hoping that I was misreading the whole thing. Judging from the look of barely withheld laughter was telling me no, however.

"Come on, I'll show you the one you'll be using, and I gotta say, I'm pretty jealous." I obliged, following Sakura out of the office and back down the hallway we were in earlier. I noticed through the window the giant robot being lowered back into the bay, as the tank was being filled with red-orange water again. We made our way down a flight of stairs and around a corner to enter a new holding tank, similar to the one we passed on the way in here. The robot in question, however, looked different from the one I saw in battle. Aside from being free of dings and dents, this one shared the monochromatic paint job, but had a negligibly thicker body, but an overall slimmer profile. Without the water covering the mech from the neck down, I could see all the way down to the feet, which appeared thinner from what I'd seen on the other mech, but that could just be me seeing things. What I could tell was that it stood a few feet taller, and the most pronounced difference was a completely different shaped head. Instead of the rather medieval-helmet shaped head on the other robot, this one had a blocky, angular head with three eyes. The armor also appeared slimmer and more angular, as well as more mobile.

"So, this is what She wants me to pilot?" I asked, trying to get a hold on the situation. Sakura nodded, grinning.

"Y'know, this thing is pretty nice. I'm awful jealous of you, I'm sure Mal is too, he's the other pilot by the way. This thing cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of five billion dollars, so don't go blowing it up or anything." She teased. "Oh, come on, don't look so glum, you've got the dream job! This unit was made especially for you, tailored to you, built from head to toe to be your perfect weapon. That's something that almost anyone here would give anything to have!"

"Look, Sakura, it's great, but… I'm exhausted. This is a lot of information to take in for me. My entire world has been turned upside down, and nothing I ever knew makes sense anymore. But this is… great! It's great!" I halfheartedly said, hoping I'd be able to get some alone time.

"Oh, right. Sorry if I was a little much. Well, since we really haven't got anything to see, I guess I can show you your room, it's not far from here." She apologized, and we set off one last time for the dormitory wing.

We arrived at what used to be an office wing, but had been hastily converted to living quarters. It looked like this place had been set up as more of a makeshift defense than the long term base it functioned as. Sakura left me at my room with her number in case I needed anything, and showed me how to work the facilities.

After she left, I made my way to the shower. Come to think of it, I hadn't had a shower as long as I could remember. Really, all I could remember was from the day I woke up in Aperture to now, and there hadn't been any time for personal activities. As I stood, trying to process everything that happened in the span of the twelve hours I was awake.

Piloting a giant robot to fight off giant monsters that were attacking Aperture which was earth's last stand. Why was I the one who _had_ to do this? And what about this Mal guy, the other pilot. If he was so good at killing Angels, why did GLaDOS _need_ me to have one of the giant robots? Better yet, why did she trust me so much to give me the great power of driving the mech, if she knew I could very well tear the facility limb from limb if I wanted to?

Everything was questionable, nothing made sense. I decided to sleep on it. Maybe this would make sense in the morning.

 **A/N: Well, chapter 1 of this tale. I'll be sticking loosely to the Neon Genesis storyline, but don't expect a perfect retelling, since I'm leaving plenty of people out of the fun and Chell isn't the whiny little baka that Shinji is, so hopefully that can make up for it.**


	2. Meet-ly the Wheatly

**A/N: Eyy, Chapter 2. Due to the way I update these things, there'lll be longer times in between chapters until I finish my other stories, so yeah. Not that anyone cares, just a psa.**

I woke to a knock on my door. At first, I didn't get up, but when I rolled over to see the clock read 10:25, I realized that it was probably important. I climbed out of bed and hastily put on the Aperture Science test subject jumpsuit, the only clothing I had other than a nightgown left for me.

I opened the door to see a few boxes on my doorstep. Hm, I don't remember ordering anything, but I took the boxes in to my living room and opened them to see cans of food and a packing list. The majority of thing were pretty standard, but the thing that caught my eye was at the very bottom, written on in pen. _Chocolate_ _Cake Mix._ I began pulling out cans and bags, hastily searching for the fabled box. Finally, after disassembling almost all the crates, I victoriously pulled out a box of Aperture Brand Chocolate Cake Mix.

I turned over the little box to read the instructions, and I saw words neatly written in sharpie: _Not a lie!_ Very funny. I sat the cake mix on my counter and began putting the various items in cabinets and the small refrigerator I had.

After everything was in its rightful place (I guess) I took a box of corn flakes and made breakfast. Come to think of it, the fact I was hungry was a good sign, it meant that all of the Aperture brand "Subject Enhancing" injections had long worn off, and my first meal after an indefinite fast was…

Corn flakes.

Way to go, Chell.

I finished the bowl with a sense of irony and went to wash it out, but was interrupted by another ring on the doorbell. I moaned to myself and put the dish down before opening the door to see Sakura's smiling face as well as a man whom I didn't know.

He was, at a glance, sort of similar in features to me, but of course, a man. He had short black hair, grey-brown eyes, and appeared about my age, maybe a year off at most.

"Hey there, already up I see! We need you down in the bays for some preliminary testing, can you come with us?" Sakura rather bluntly asked. I shrugged and nodded, closing the door behind me. "By the way, that's Mal, the Unit A0 pilot, so you two are gonna need to get along." Sakura added as we descended to the giant robot tanks. Fair enough, I guess.

Opposing Sakura's comment, the rest of the walk was doused in uncomfortable silence, and we arrived in an empty holding tank a few minutes later. Well, empty save for two white pill-like things suspended halfway in the red-orange water. Sakura showed me to the changing room, where I found a folded… thing.

It was some sort of clothing, and I was obviously supposed to put it on, as there was nothing but a mirror and the bench it sat on. If Aperture had taught me anything, it was how to solve problems in tiny rooms.

I took off the jumpsuit and noticed juts how pale I was. When was the last time I'd seen the sun? Well, in space I could _see_ the sun behind me, but I don't think that counts, so then… after I killed GLaDOS in the first run? I obviously didn't actually get out of this place when I sent Wheatley to space, so then, give or take 10,000,000 days? It was certainly showing.

I figured my way through the new jumpsuit, and got my feet in the proper place, hands in the proper place, and zipped it up, but it was awful baggy. Surely it wasn't supposed to be like this, right? I began looking for something, anything to see if there was some sort of problem, and found that the boxy bracelets had a switch that tightened the suit to a more suitable form. I observed myself in the mirror, and to be honest, I didn't look too bad in this thing. Most of the skin-tight parts were stark white, per Aperture's fondness, but on the back was a black plate with the white Aperture logo printed on it, as well as various plates across my chest and legs being black. The final piece was an odd little headband with two little nubs on it that were hardly distinguishable from my jet-black hair.

I left the changing room to see Mal just emerging himself, sporting a similar suit to mine, albeit with more black and a slightly bigger plate on the back. Sakura then led me to a catwalk that had been extended to go across to the giant pills, and noticed the fronts had been lifted off to reveal long seats similar to the one I saw Mal in whilst he was fighting the Angel. I could see that from his emerged a green glow and from my own a blue glow. Oh no.

I climbed into the pill to come face to face with none other than Wheatley the Moron himself. And, in tradition, he began the unwanted conversation with a bang.

"Is… is that you? Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I honestly never meant any of it, I swear, it was the bloody body that made me go all nuts, but, hey, now I can make amends, we can be friends again, just like old times, right?" he babbled out faster than I thought anyone ever could. "Anyway, do you have any idea exactly what's going on here, because they kinda just grabbed me out of space and jammed me in here and it's bloody rude." He complained. At least nothing's changed.

"Same thing happened to me, besides the grabbing out of space part." I answered the core, more to see how he'd react to my voice than to actually give an answer.

"Oh my god, you CAN talk! So there was no brain damage! Bloody brilliant!" he exclaimed as the top of the pill closed. "That wasn't me." He blurted out as I looked back at him.

" _Initializing Plug Flooding"_ GLaDOS's voice broadcast into my pill. No, no, nononono, why didn't I know this was a trap? The pill began filling with the red-orange liquid, covering my feet, then hips, then chest, arms, shoulders, neck, I took a breath in and tried to hold as long as I could as Wheatley began to freak out for his own safety. If I wasn't being drowned at the moment, I would definitely explain that having a dead human near a core does not damage the core at all. Finally, when I could hold my breath no longer, I accepted my fate and took a long breath out, then breathed in the water.

But, it didn't feel like water, it felt like air. I breathed in and out as if nothing was wrong. Wheatley stopped freaking out on seeing that the water was doing nothing to him and that I wasn't dead. I looked over on a display to see Mal holding in laughter at me. Well excuse me if I thought I was being drowned. Around me, the liquid and walls slowly shifted into a view of the outside room. I looked around me, and it felt like it was just my long metal seat floating in the room, although I knew I was encased in the pill.

" _Synchronization Rates holding steady."_ GLaDOS commented as I sat, unsure if there was something I was supposed to be doing. Suddenly, the room shook and alarms began to sound. Almost instantly, a voice patch appeared on the dashboard.

"Pilot, do you feel nauseous at all?" a scientist asked. No. "Do you have any physical pain?" nope. "Any light-headedness?" Nah. "Any reason why you would be unable to pilot an Evangelion?" I guess not. "Then prepare for launch." He finished before terminating the patch. Wait, right now? Why now? I have no idea how to pilot one of these Evan-whatevers! My pill lurched forward and a second patch came through, this time, Sakura, who tried to reassure me.

"Look, we were going to launch Mal, but She insisted we send you into the field. Don't worry, I'll be here to help you. For now, just know that right joystick is for handling weapons, left is for evasive maneuvers, right pedal is running, left is to jump, lean to accelerate or decelerate, use your hands for punching and other empty-handed actions. Make sense?" she quickly instructed. I nodded, I guess that's simple enough. My pod stopped moving for a second, before twisting and lurching again then stopping. The outside feet changed again, and I could see a giant draining pool of the Red-orange liquid.

" _Evangelion Unit Test-Type A1 Activation Successful, releasing primary, secondary, and tertiary restraints."_ GLaDOS announced, and I began to see the walls moving to reveal the arms and giant shoulder pylons of the robot. Then, the entire room began moving backwards. No, I was moving, or rather, the robot was being lifted backwards.

" _Final Launch Preparations Ready, Launching Evangelion Unit Test-Type A1 in five… four… three… two… one…"_ GLaDOS's voice droned before another sickening lurch shook my body and I could see lights whizzing by me.

"Don't worry, you're gonna do great, Mal and I are rooting for you!" Sakura assured me as I reached ground level.

"This is bloody madness! Why does She expect us to just do whatever she wants because she says so?!" Wheatley complained.

"Because this is a grander picture. GLaDOS would have us outright killed if there wasn't some reason she _absolutely_ needed us. Don't you get it? There is something larger than us, than anything at play right now, now quit complaining!" I told the core, before grabbing the controls and shakily walking out into the sunlit city.

"Well what else do you expect me to bloody do? I've just got to sit here between your bloody human legs and try and figure what all this crap means!" the core half-yelled, and I instantly became incredibly self-conscious of there the core was inserted, which was on the very end of the dashboard, directly between my legs.

"Get it together you two, the Fourth Angel's ETA is in less than a minute!" Sakura scolded, and true to her word, a giant black monster smashed down across the city less than thirty seconds later…

 **A/N: Well, now you can kinda see the story taking shape, and I have nothing to say, so until next time, I've been Pix, thanks for reading!**


	3. Cantaloupe

**A/N: Well, not much to say, but hey, new chapter so that's cool.**

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I shakily walked out into the city, struggling to keep the robot upright through the uncomfortable controls. I took a step forward, and accidentally crushed a car, throwing me completely off balance, and the robot fell to the ground. Real smooth. As I tried to stand back up, the Angel grabbed my robot by the head, and I could feel my own head being squeezed. The Angel reeled back and began bashing the mech's head as a splitting pain rushed across my face. I released the controls and put my hands over my face, trying to stop the pain, but it kept pushing. Wheatley was freaking out, of course, and after a minute of the Angel smashing my head in well enough, it threw the mech across town and into a giant building.

I sat in the cockpit, holding my head, the searing pain slowly fading. How was I supposed to do this? This wasn't like the tests in Aperture, I was genuinely terrified for my life. I was losing my one chance to solve this test and beat the angel.

As I sat, I noticed a slow, thumping sound from deep below me. It got faster, stronger, louder, and suddenly, the Eva jerked to life once more, not at my control this time. I reached for the controls as the Eva stood, but they were unresponsive. Wheatley was once again panicking, blabbering about everything rejecting him. I could head metal creaking and groaning as the helmet piece shattered in two and the mech roared, before charging forward madly.

I saw a patch from the base come in on the dashboard, but the audio was impossible to decipher, although I could hear panic and uncertainty in the garbled voice. I was suddenly more afraid, had I done something wrong? Why was it not responding? Wheatley had since passed out, or maybe shorted out, either way, he was quiet, leaving only my screams of panic to fill the plug.

The Angel cast an AT field and the enraged Evangelion tore effortlessly through it, but was caught in a choke by the Angel's massive black arms. The Eva was unfazed, and snapped both the Angel's arms, before slamming it to the ground. I began desperately tugging on the controls, trying stop it as the robot began tearing into the Angel's flesh, scattering freight-train sized entrails across the city. It ripped out one of the Angel's ribs and began bashing one of the Angel's sharp bones on a hard red sphere in the Angel's chest. The core?

The Eva smashed the red sphere to bits and it exploded, showering red across the mech and surrounding buildings, but it was not satisfied, and continued mutilating the Angel, even going so far as eating parts of it in a mad frenzy.

I turned the plug feed off, not wanting to watch the horror that the Evangelion had wrought. This thing _was_ a robot, right? If I knew one thing about robots, it's that they don't do this. No, there was something else to these Evangelions. Something biological, almost human. They were certainly a difficult puzzle, but I was going to figure it out.

With one final roar, the Eva ceased to function and the entire plug went dark. Then, it roughly shot, and I assumed it was ejected. I could hear the thrusters activate for a few seconds, before the sickening falling feeling took over and the plug smashed into the ground. I blacked out.

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I woke up in a room. Well, that much was obvious. A hospital room most likely, although there wasn't much to differentiate it from any of Aperture's many Test Chambers. It probably could have very well been one of the chambers, since a stark white room in this good condition just didn't exist for no reason. I sat up and noticed an IV in my arm, and that I was no longer in my plugsuit (I think that's what they called it), instead a simple hospital gown. How long was I out? What happened?

Oh. I remember. The Eva, the Angel.

I sat up. What happened out there? Was it all a bad dream?

No, it was real. I know it was.

A door opened, and Sakura, a nurse, and Mal entered. Judging by the way the door opened, this was definitely an old test chamber. The nurse switched the bag on my IV and promptly left, leaving just us three.

"What is an Eva?" I weakly asked, not expecting an answer with all the secrets they kept around here already. Sakura sat across from my bed, biting her lip and trying to decide between telling me and following policies, although she went with the latter. Mal wasn't saying anything, just sitting quietly, and if I had to guess, I'd say that Sakura just dragged him along since he had nothing better to be doing.

From what Sakura _could_ tell me, the "Berserker" anomaly was uncommon, and I won't encounter it many times throughout my piloting career. If I triggered it on the first day, then just how long did they expect these pilots to last?

"Oh, also, training begins tomorrow a soon as they let you out. Report to Tank A-14. The one they keep your Eva in." She informed me. Why should I pilot one of those things again? When did I agree to this? I had to remind myself what I told Wheatley, there was some bigger picture.

Hours later, someone else entered, someone I hadn't met before, but she looked eerily familiar. She had ghostly pale skin and piercing yellow eyes. Looks like GLaDOS got herself a spiffy human-shaped wheelchair.

"What do you want?" I croaked, my voice still hurting from my decades of silence. GLaDOS (or so I assumed) shifted for a second, acting as if she hadn't heard me at all, then answered in a voice that was unmistakably GLaDOS's.

"Well, I _want_ to tell you exactly what you were trying to pilot out there, but with that attitude, I think you can wait." She sarcastically answered and began to get up. Just like old times. "Just as resilient as ever. You know, I was actually in favor of bringing you out of stasis, I was hoping we could bond and put the past behind us." If I knew anything, it was that that was a turret-white lie. But, I played along, since some of her games were fun to thwart.

"What makes you all of a sudden want to be besties?" I pressed, propping myself up and GLaDOS paced around the room.

"I never _wanted_ to be enemies in the first place, I wanted to be pals from the moment we brought you out to test back in the glory days. I _wanted_ to let you go and give you cake, but _you_ had other planes. Don't worry though, we can put the past behind us and move forward from here, right?" Classic, blaming me for trying not to die. She certainly has a way with words for being a heartless machine, I'll give her that much.

"Ah, friends. Sure. Well, the best way to foster friendship is to help each other out, you know, and I could really go for knowing exactly what these Evas are, since we both know they aren't what you've been marketing them to me as." GLaDOS smirked, noticing how I'd worked that puzzle.

"You're awful good at this, even with what you've been through. You win, I'll tell you" she sarcastically exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "They're actually giant cantaloupes given the gift of life by the sun god Apollo and dressed to the nines in armored gorilla fur and vermin excretion. Merry Christmas."

Ha. Very funny. I almost forgot to laugh. So nobody was going to tell me what these Evas were. Fair enough.

"Yeah, thanks, I _completely_ believe that." I muttered, layering as much of my own sarcasm as I could into every word, although GLaDOS was certainly much better at that than I was. After that, she smirked and left, leaving me and my thoughts.

Why was it such a challenge to know what I was driving around out there? I mean, five billion dollars made it no stretch to believe it was a giant cantaloupe at this point, but there was something more. Even sitting inside the Eva made me feel like there was someone else there. Someone besides me and Wheatley. Someone familiar. A mystery for another day, I decided, and rolled over to get some much deserved sleep.

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I was let out of the hospital wing the next morning and immediately went to the place Sakura told me to be. For the most part, the Tank was empty, save for the Evangelion and Mal, who was leaning against a wall studying the mech. I went to the annexed locker room and changed into my plugsuit, and exited to find Sakura waiting, holding a clipboard.

"Hey Chell, how you felling?" she asked, looking up from the paper she was studying. We shared some small talk for a few minutes, waiting for Mal to come out of the changing room.

Today was all about refining Pilot-to-Core handovers and interaction, which was big words for saying that both pilots needed to work better with their core counterparts. Apparently, Mal hadn't been piloting much longer than I have, only a week and a half more, so we were both practically beginners.

So, there was a change of plans, Unit A1 was still not fully operational after the battle, so we instead went to the Simulation Bodies to practice. I'd never see a Simulation body before, and I was a little weirded out by it.

The body looked like a giant head suspended without a body and no flesh, just the exposed brain all wired up to the plug system. We boarded and I was surprised to not have the same feeling as in my Eva, that other presence I felt was gone. Wheatley, however, was not.

"So you're alive! That's great! I mean, I had no doubts at all in my mind, but you weren't back last night and they rushed you out to the hospital and all that, but you're not dead and that's good!" he rambled as the simulation started up.

"I'll be honest," he stated, "these 'simulation bodies' feel a lot different than the real thing, y'know?" He wasn't wrong, I guess, although I seriously doubt he could feel the other presence in the Eva.

A mock-up of the Fourth Angel was generated in the simulated city, and a rifle appeared in my recreated Eva's hands.

"Due to multiple studies, we have concluded that destroying the core is the only way to permanently defeat an Angel. Take the rifle, center in on the target, and pull the trigger." An AI voice instructed, and I did as was asked. The reticle slowly drifted onto the Angel's core, then locked and beeped, prompting me to pull the trigger, and the Angel fell back and exploded.

"Good. Repeat this drill until it becomes second nature." The voice commanded as a new Angel appeared. I repeated, destroying the angel and resetting for the next. I kept watch on the ammo counter on the bottom of my dash, and when it emptied after its 30 shots, the AI began teaching me about reloading. Wheatley was in charge of that, actually, but I had to give him control of an arm, which was as simple as flipping a switch conveniently located by my thumb.

After handing the reigns to Wheatley, I watched as he swung the arm out to grab a spare mag, and winced as he missed the building-sized storage entirely and clubbed straight through it. The building, fortunately, regenerated after a second, and he tried again, managing to grasp a magazine this time. He slammed the clip into the bullpup rifle and I quickly snatched back the right arm before he could destroy anything else.

I went to continue destroying Angels, but the gun didn't fire. I looked down at the ammo counter to see that it was empty.

"Continue this drill alongside the other drill until they are both second nature." The AI droned. Great. I let Wheatley clumsily switch the mag again, before opening fire on the Angel.

This was going to be a long day.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

 **A/N: Well, I'm updating outta order, look at that. This is just so fun to write that I had to. Until next time, I've been Pix, and I'll see ya next time!**


	4. Wot?

**A/N: Well, awful quiet down there in the reviews section. Almost making me think that you guys aren't too excited about this story. Well, I've got a new chapter for you little church mice.**

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Training went well, aside from the fact that Wheatley racked up more simulated structural damage than the Angel, and afterwards, I had to take him with me. "Bonding time" they called it. Well, I'd like to see someone else try and bond with a murderous, not to mention moronic, core that almost killed them twice.

I unlocked my door as Wheatley floated quizzically over my shoulder, asking why I had to stab the door to make it open. At least he got fitted for anti-gravity, because stabbing the door open would be a lot harder with one hand. I tossed the keycard on my counter and flipped on the lights, to Wheatley's displeasure.

"So, this is your humble abode. Hmm, a true, uh, noir… casa. Yeah." He fumbled. I'm pretty confident he has no idea what he just said, and I wasn't about to question it. As I dug through the small refrigerator for anything to eat for lunch, Wheatley took it upon himself to explore the area and voice every single comment he had about it. At least it filled the otherwise silent apartment, but to be honest, I preferred the eerie silence to Wheatley's babbling.

"Y'know, it, uh, doesn't look like you've got a place for me to stay, mate. No worries, no worries, though, I… I'll just find one! Yeah! Carry on, I'll take care of this!" He yelled across the fairly small space as I rolled my eyes and produced a microwave meal that looked edible enough, or so the package would have me believe. I was never much of a health nut, but before Aperture, I remember at east being able to pronounce the ingredients in whatever I was going to eat. Just how long was I down there? Wait, would Wheatley know?

"Hey, Wheatley?" I called, only to look up and see no trace of him. "Wheatley?" I repeated, and I heard his muffled "Wot?" from under my bed, before the blue glow of his optic emerged, followed by the rest of the core.

"Do you happen to have the date I was brought in? To Aperture? For Testing?" I pried, hoping he would have access to that sort of information. He sat back in the air for a moment, as if thinking deeply.

"I don't, but I'm sure we can find out. Maybe _She_ can tell you. I'll dig around later, if I can, that is. But hey! I found a nice little corner for myself, but, uh, you don't happen to have a Management Rail around here, do you?" He asked, oblivious to the fact that I hadn't seen a single rail since I arrived.

 **A/N: Short chater, mainly to fill the lull in the story and to give me the chance to explain my headcanon, since Evangelion is confusing enough on its own and I tried to hold close to the EVA's quirks and qualities, so I guess I'll start with a history lesson.**

 **A few months before the beginning of the story, Aperture was fortified after Tokyo-3 was destroyed and the EVAs were still incomplete and GLaDOS was the first candidate to pilot the first EVA, Eva A1. Similarly to Yuki, the contact experiment merges what was left of Caroline into the EVA and due to GLaDOS's massacre of Aperture employees on Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, the souls of Mal's (A genderbent version of Mel if you didn't know) and many other subject's parents inhabited EVA A0 soon after it's activation test with an empty plug.**

 **Chell was awoken on a hunch by GLaDOS after a test subject was killed during a second test on A0, as well as Wheatley being recovered from space to take some of the mental burden of the pilot, since the two were relatively compatible. Chell was able to Sync with ease due to Caroline (in my headcanon, at least) being Chell's mom, and Wheatley's construct was created closely in conjunction with the GLaDOS project.**

 **Mal was the first successful pilot, combined with Rick, although he experiences lower Sync rates due to multiple souls residing within the EVA. His success can be accredited to an uncanny and random collection that happens to work well enough to pass, like an old car or something.**

 **Honestly, I screwed it up and labeled the 2** **nd** **Angel as the 3** **rd** **Angel, which set me back a while battle each, but I'm just going to roll with it now. The Second Angel destroyed Tokyo-3 and was destroyed when it breached T. Dogma (Lillith was moved during the battle).**

 **Anyway, that got a few things off my chest and should make it easier to write in the future! If you guys actually do want to see more of this story, be sure to actually tell me so because I have no idea what anyone thinks right now. If everyone hates it, then it's definitely not worth the time I spend writing it, but if even one person wants to see more then it becomes worth every minute!**

 **I've been Pix, and thanks for reading!**


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